Wait a minute. Let me take you there. Bang Bang was the definitely THE performance.

SPOILER ALERT

Such a great rollercoaster of an episode overall. Action, excitement! All the dance perfs were enjoyable, although the raps left something to be desired. Although props to the "You Look Happy" team for their Produce 101 themed, pretty heavy lyrics that had everyone moved. So Kim Hyeongeun winning overall wasn't surprising at all.

The dance contest had a somewhat predictable outcome. Mina had me weak in the knees with her transformation and the audience agreed. Her styling, expressions and dancing... it was all perfect. Nayoung was amazing, but I think her styling was maybe a little off and she just couldn't quite match the impact Mina had. (Nayoung apparently choreographed the whole thing, which is pretty damn cool). And as I anticipated, the Bang Bang team was just too good for their own good. While Mina only had to seriously contend with Nayoung for the victory, Bang Bang had 7 girls in the top 22 duking it out.

It was a contest with strange rules and it basically served Mnet's purpose. Outrage, noise and publicity. Just what they're always looking for. It was a contest to find the best dance performer (emphasis on performance), yet it wasn't, because the "brackets" were all fucked up. Just for kicks, some specifics:

Let's start with Bang Bang. While it looks like the votes drop quite fast (191, 189, 101, 70, 41, 25, 19) it actually adds up to quite a lot (636). The performance actually got the most votes (forgetting Say My Name, where all votes weren't revealed) with 636. That speaks probably to how good it was. But there were just too many master chefs in the kitchen. (Chungha's fourth place actually doesn't surprise me. Unless you specifically pay attention to her, Yoojung and Somi steal her thunder in almost all of the group moments.)

There was a similar problem with Growl, and while it wasn't full of heavy hitters, it had some good dancers and a ton of people taking votes (190, 91, 84, 62, 60, 51, 29) so P.Soyeon wasn't able to run away enough with the points. The total votes were also only 567, which is the least of the (known) bunch.

While Full Moon had the least amount of performers, it was three top 10 girls, so the 568 votes divided quite evenly (225, 204 and 139). Now, consider if you replaced Pinky or Chaeyeon with a less popular or skilled person... poor Sohye could now be in the shit-storm of her life.

So with Mina stealing 269 votes, Nayoung ~196 (she was #4 overall, so between Pinky and Yoojung) and rest of their team only 100-150 votes between them (estimates, as the full result wasn't revealed) the end result just seems logical.

If you asked me who the best dance performer was overall, I'd say Yoojung easy. But this was a contest with more complex (and silly) rules.

SPOILER ALERT OVER

Next week, concepts! (and eliminations :/) The girls seem to have numbers corresponding to their ranks in the position evaluations.

Apparently it's going to be one vote after all... I don't even know what to believe anymore, will just have to wait and see.

Anyway, if it's one vote, I'm probably going to keep voting for Sejeong, unless I see something extraordinary from someone. I think the time of trying to "save" someone has come and gone, although...

If it's five votes, it'll probably be Sejeong, Yoojung, Somi, Mina and whoever I like that's the lowest on today's ranking. Will have to see the episode first.

I think Sejeong, Yoojung and Somi are 100% guaranteed to make the final 11, and the further we go on this show, the more obvious the lineup becomes. If I'd have to guess on current trends and the new system:

Park Soyeon might make it as well, slightly worried about Jeon Soyeon since her edits haven't been super favorable. Kim Nayoung might suffer from the one-vote thing, possibly also Pledis girls, although I'm fairly certain Pinky is safe. Stone Buddha has her unique character now, so it would seem she would make it too. I have no idea how MBK fanbase is going to vote now, though. Shin also seems like a possibility.

For some people it really depends on how well they do AND how the show portrays them in the final episodes (there's only 4 left, remember). Sira might be such a person, and if she blows people away again, who knows. But it will get tougher and tougher as people decide on their favorites and Mnet will most certainly give screentime to the trainees that the fans want to see.

This is also why Sohye will almost certainly make it... she's popular as all hell. People want to see what she does and how she does it. Personally I find her very entertaining. People are gonna give her shit, but that's what (some) people do. Haters gonna hate. I'm most certainly not going to mind her being part of a temporary group with ten other girls in it. One hard-working, low-talent goofball is not going to ruin it for everyone else, in fact I think it's just going to enhance the whole experience with variety. These are idols, after all... it's not a sing & dance contest.

That's just how it goes. Eliminations in a couple of hours. Get ready for the tears.

Not many surprises up top. Cathy, Dani and J.Soyeon dropped out to make room for Yeunjung, Stone Buddha and Doyeon. Top 4 are unstoppable. Interestingly Kang Mina beat Somi with the help of the 100k votes. Sejeong remains a wall.

Park Soyeon was oddly low at #30, Chanmi almost out at #33. Poor Sua didn't make it. DSP's Shiyoon is out as well, Park Haeyeon, Kang Siwon, everyone in Growl team except Park Soyeon.. etc... lost many good ones. :/

Concept mission live stages just went down. Five teams of seven girls performed original songs and 3000 audience members voted on their favorite performance.

Winning team gets 150,000 votes, divided among the team members, so ~21k each. And that's quite a lot, because online votes have only 1/11 of the power they used to have and there's only a week of voting.

Going to be interesting to see how the 1-vote system will affect the votes. Top 3 will surely be Sejeong, Yoojung and Somi, but fandom power might shuffle their order quite unpredictably. Somi undoubtedly has the most hardcore fanbase due to her previous exposure and she might very well return to the top spot. But, who knows, it's also still quite unclear how casual watchers have been voting and who has been "riding along" or a "well, I should include her even if she's not my top pick" type of choice.

I'm actually not sure what will happen after this week's voting closes... will there be more voting? Time is kind of running out, though. I expect Mnet to do something crazy, though.

I'll keep voting for Sejeong, since, well... at this point I have no idea what will happen. I've also grown fond of so many girls that any outcome is fine by me, really.

The performances were all enjoyable, although I wasn't really blown away by any of them, and didn't much care for the songs, either. They all seemed like album filler. However, after listening to the studio versions, I changed my mind a little and actually do enjoy some of them quite a bit, especially Yum-Yum, Fingertips and Don't Matter. Hell, I put all five on the radio.

Next week, the eliminations will give us a top 22, which sounds more reasonable than 15. Leaves a lot more excitement for the April 1st finale.

Whoo! What a rollercoaster. Guess we found out who has the craziest fans alright.

Makes a ton of sense that Somi would grab back the #1 spot with all the JYP/Twice fans behind her and the agency trains breaking. Most people making teams of eleven would put Sejeong in theirs because she's just so rock solid in everything plus an amazing personality, but when they had to pick JUST ONE FAVE it's a whole different story. And obviously Somi's fans are the most numerous and rabid.

I could kind of understand Mina dropping to #18 because of the comments (still idiotic reason but haters gonna hate) but Pinky dropping to #19 was pretty nuts.

Sira was saved by the performance benefit, her votes numbered only 6000 without it. Only one of the new top 11 I can't understand at all (I can understand many changes since the ITSP benefit made a HUGE difference) is Sohee at #6. Don't get it, at all. But hey, Koreans gonna Korea. I can't understand all their mysterious ways.

It wasn't Dani's time yet... but it will come. At least she ended her run on a high note and received tons of praise from the very same knetz that used to hate her.

--

Next week, we indeed have some sort of a 1vs1 position battle thing. There's one week of voting for a single person again until the live finale on April 1st, where I imagine two teams will perform the wonderfully titled "Blah Blah Blah".

Nobody has really explained how it goes and what kind of benefit the winning team (or person?) will get. I guess there'll be live voting of some kind. I'll post more once I find out how it goes...

I'd also like plastic princess in there but not sure who I'd take out. Kaiser Sohye is too entertaining (in good and bad) to take out... dunno.

But likely what I think doesn't matter, only top six of these girls are for certain (99%) in the group. The bottom half will be a battle. But I have to say, I'm fine with most anything, all of the girls have their unique skills and charms, they made it this far and I don't actively dislike any one of them, so... good luck.

--

One of my fave moments. That crown weighed heavy no doubt. I hope all the haters (who didn't have a single even remotely good reason to hate her) can fuck off now.

Her speech was perfect and she was a beacon of positivity and kindness through the whole ranking thing as well. She'll go places.

Basically for me 1-6 of the "no 22k benefit", then Yeunjung, Mina, Han Hyeri is cute, Park Soyeon, and I would otherwise say the rapper girl (Jeon Soyeon?) but idk how many rappers an 11-member group needs lol.

It's finally over! Finale was way too long.So final lineup, no surprises! Super awesome for chungha who jumped ranks soo much after that one episode. A little sad that Kim Nayoung couldn't make it to be with her jellfish mates...now she gotta wait a year to debut with them =x

As for the group name...err ioi :/ lol. I don't think I've seen anyone happy about that name.

The two final stages in all their glory. I really liked how they did two completely different songs and performances. More than that I loved how they all performed together and forgot about the stupid benefit/rivalry stuff. Crush is hardly song-of-the-year material and with 22 girls it got a little messy but hey, it was still a lot of fun. And everything looked great.

Jebus, check how tight that race was for the 10th and 11th spot. Seven people roughly within 10k votes in there.

The final group is highly visual-oriented. It has two great singers and some competent ones, bunch of great dancers... but a little low on rappers. Im Nayoung and even Yoojung can pull off some rapping though. My group ideal (other than Sohye of course) was pretty performance-oriented, the Soyeons would've made it amazing, but this line-up is still pretty great, to be honest.

It's a cute pre-release. The song sounds so obviously better as a studio version. Also, less ducks! :V

Can't really tell what is up with Yoojung in the video tho, she looks fine to me whenever she's on camera, but then there's moments of her talking to the other girls or something...

Guess the screentime distribution seems slightly uneven and netizens are already giving shit to Yeunjung for "hogging the spotlight", pushing Sejeong away and stuff (which was obviously just playful but anyway)... Somi pushing Chungha to the front in the end was cute, tho.